


leather and lace (and the taste of oxidation)

by aaries



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Assassins AU, F/F, more tags and characters will be added soon promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23671435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaries/pseuds/aaries
Summary: crystal had never expected betrayal to come this fast, if at all.clearly, she'd been wrong.
Relationships: Gigi Goode/Crystal Methyd
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this has been a while in the making, so i decided to stick a season 12 spin on it and see where it went.  
> where am i going with the plot of this? you tell me! we'll see!  
> thanks to alex and lily for beta-ing, to the incredible chaos of the jankie candle discord for encouraging this madness, and to phoebe waller-bridge for writing killing eve and making me have a soft spot for hot murderous women.  
> if you know where i stole this title from, you're legally obligated to tell me. i need more friends like you.  
> -  
> also on aq - i'm aries there <3

Gigi’s glare burns into Crystal from across the room and she doesn't know how much more of the silent treatment she can take from her before she snaps. This has all happened so suddenly, she thinks, and struggles to even remember how this situation came about under the pressure of her stare. There’s something so intimidating about being practically frozen in place by eyes that have only ever been friendly and it makes her stop and exhale, a cold cloud that’s clearly visible in the empty space between them. The fireplace has long stopped burning; its comforting warmth is gone and she’s left with nothing. She pulls her jacket closer around herself and shivers. 

“Can I go now?” Crystal asks, tone vaguely playful, though she knows it’s no laughing matter. “If you’re not going to talk to me, what’s the point?”

“No,” Gigi insists, quiet enough that it’d be easy to miss it if the room weren’t so eerily silent. Not once does her gaze falter. “You owe me an explanation. You need to tell me what you know, and what you told them to bring them here.”

The police are outside, surely. Crystal can feel them; the curtains are drawn, they aren’t visible, but they’re waiting, they’re trying to break in, they’re clawing at the walls like rabid animals. “I didn’t do anything,” she lies through her teeth, just as she has been doing for months. Gigi’s eyes narrow, and Crystal feels like a child. “I didn’t tell them anything,” she repeats, pushing all of her fake confidence into the words and watching it dissipate alongside them into the air, leaving her defenceless. “They’ve known all along. I couldn’t have provoked it.”

Gigi sighs, finally breaking eye contact, and the charade is up. For a second, Crystal feels guilty for not admitting to anything - but why should she? She did it to protect herself. She owes Gigi nothing, especially now. As Gigi heads towards the door, Crystal tries to convince herself that she doesn't feel at all guilty. 

She stops in her tracks and turns on her heel. Her eyes meet Crystal’s again - she looks weak, defeated, as if she’s about to give up. She’s metres away, but Crystal can feel her confident facade cracking like old plaster, and it reminds her of how things used to be.

“Crystal-” she starts, and Crystal flinches. She hasn't heard her say her name in weeks. “Are you sure, because there has to be something, some reason,  _ surely?”  _

Crystal looks around and wonders how long they have before someone breaks down the door. There are no sirens, no blinking lights that illuminate the side of the house with bright blues and reds like a morbid disco. They’re probably waiting in silence - most likely armed - but Crystal’s not the one in trouble, so she takes a seat at the worn armchair and pours herself a glass of bourbon from the clouded decanter, staring at herself in the reflection. Tentatively, Gigi sits across from her. She obviously expects an explanation, but the silence is telling. The glass slams down on the table and Crystal curses herself for making too much noise, just in case. She moves to pour herself another, opening her mouth to reply.

“Did you really expect to get away with it?’, she begins, and she grimaces like every word is a fresh knife in her back. ‘You  _ killed _ him, Gigi, you murdered a man in cold blood-”

“It’s not like he was innocent!” Her voice cracks. It’s been years since Crystal has seen her cry - it’s so out of character that it shakes her to the core. “ _ It wasn’t even my choice! _ I was a pawn in their game, I did exactly as they told me - to the letter, Crystal, I was so  _ careful _ \- and then they fucked off and left me to clean up after them-” As her voice trails off, Crystal thinks for a second how ironic it would be if they were waiting outside all along, and they came to arrest her, prepared for the infamously heartless agent only to see her sobbing, broken, begging, collapsed to her knees at the feet of her colleague. A minute passes in silence. Gigi sits with her head in her hands, shaking. Crystal considers pouring her a drink, but she knows Gigi’s never been one for whiskey. She doesn’t move; she can’t leave, and there’s nothing of interest upstairs. The house used to be grand and elegantly furnished, but it lays empty since the bosses left and took everything with them. Crystal stands up.

Gigi’s head rises. She tries to make eye contact again but her eyes are filled with tears and the confident exterior from earlier is long gone. 

“Please don’t go,” she whispers, but Crystal doesn’t allow herself to think of it as anything other than strategy. If she leaves, they’ll arrest Gigi, and her hope of escaping unpunished will disappear. She doesn’t want Crystal here; she needs her, but only in the most literal sense. Crystal looks back at her and echoes the infamous glare she’s known for. 

“Why should I stay?” Crystal spits back - to humour her, old habits die hard, but mostly because she genuinely wants a reason. “For you?” A fresh wave of tears fall from Gigi’s eyes, and she tries to choke out an answer but fails. Crystal looks down at her feet, then says nothing and begins to walk towards the door. Gigi’s head is back on the table, her eyes are closed, but the sound of Crystal’s heels on the hardwood floor tells her all she needs to know. Crystal grabs the door handle, twists, and steps outside. 

_ Nobody’s there.  _ There are no tire tracks, no odd disturbance in the stones of the driveway, no evidence that anybody except the two of them has been here recently. The door slammed itself closed behind her, so she opens it and retraces her steps, confused. Gigi’s still crying, she can’t see her. She thinks it’s them, most likely, she thinks this is it.

“Gigi,” Crystal starts, stepping closer to her, and she’s instantly attentive and utterly confused. Crystal doesn't think before she speaks. “I made a mistake, or they did, but there’s nobody out there, and you need to leave. You  _ really _ need to leave.” 

It’s an instantaneous switch - Gigi revives the confident act in a second flat; it’s as if she wasn’t sobbing onto the table a minute ago. She stands up, wipes her eyes, and walks toward Crystal, barely registering her confusion as she snatches her hand and carries on walking.

“What are you waiting for?” She whispers, more for effect than anything else - she doesn’t need to be quiet anymore. Crystal knows her too well; she’s melodramatic, always has been. She should call her out on it, but can’t bring herself to. She’d die before admitting it to her, but it’s oddly charming. 

She knows, deep down, that she shouldn’t let her pull her along like this. It’s only ever gotten her in trouble before, it’s only going to get her in more trouble the further along she lets herself go. But as Gigi pulls her out of the door and they stumble towards the car, she makes no effort to stop her.

Twenty minutes pass with no conversation as Gigi steers them both along the highway. Crystal doesn't know where she’s taking them, but she knows better than to try to take back control when she’s like this. The radio drones on in the background playing some obnoxiously loud pop song, and Gigi’s evidently bored of whatever generic boy band is playing after a minute, so she slams a shaky hand against the channel button and it switches to something slower and softer. She turns to Crystal and opens her mouth to speak.

“Eyes on the road,” Crystal mutters, but it’s half-hearted at best. Gigi giggles, childish and sweet, and it’s as if the argument in the house never happened at all. Crystal doesn't want to be this comfortable with her, but she is, she always will be. 

_ “Concentrate,” _ Crystal stresses, and Gigi laughs louder. Crystal rolls down a window. “Where are we even going?” She tries, because if Gigi’s going to speak, she’s going to make her say something useful.

“You’ll see,” she replies, and flashes Crystal a blinding smile.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s pushing 3am when Gigi pulls the car into the parking lot of a motel that’s clearly seen far better days. If she were awake enough to take in any more of her surroundings than the bare minimum, Crystal would have an array of snide comments about the state of their new living quarters -  _ isn’t this below you, Goode, aren’t you uncomfortable in less than five-star luxury?  _ \- but she keeps quiet, pushes her hair back off her face and follows Gigi inside silently, doesn’t object when she pushes a crisp hundred dollar bill across the lobby desk. She pretends not to notice the receptionist’s sigh of relief when Gigi specifies she wants a twin room and pushes down the stabbing pain in her stomach at the comment, mentally passing it off as hunger pains. 

The door to their room slams shut behind them and Crystal makes a beeline for the bed closest to the window, throwing herself onto the mattress and groaning softly as she feels her face hit its surface, the impact more reminiscent of skin on concrete than feathers. Gigi clears her throat behind her, and it takes every ounce of strength in Crystal’s body not to turn and throw one of her pillows right at her. God, but it would be nice to shut her up for a minute, wipe that ever-present smug little smile off her face, watch her lose her composure again for a second.

“If you’re gonna need to use the bathroom,” Gigi snaps, audibly irritated, “do it fast, because I’m showering soon.”

“It’s three in the morning, can’t you wait?” Crystal replies, rolling onto her back and perching herself up on one of the obnoxious embroidered cushions next to the bed’s headboard. She felt her back crack and winced in discomfort, shifting around to find a more casual position. Maybe this would make better ammunition, she thinks, seeing as this motel apparently stuffed their decorative bed linen with bricks.

“I’m going to shower,” Gigi repeats, and Crystal can’t help but notice how out of place she looks, standing in the middle of the room, arms folded, white-tipped acrylic nails tapping impatiently against the fabric of her blazer. “And I’m being nice and giving you a two-minute warning.” As she rolls her eyes and pulls herself off the bed, heading towards the bathroom, Crystal laughs to herself at the thought. If this is her being nice, she thinks, I’d hate to see her angry. It’s a lie, and she knows it, but lies are all she has left to keep her sane. 

She catches Gigi’s gaze as she pulls open the bathroom door - it’s cold, and uncharacteristically so. The first time they’d met, Crystal remembers noticing the brightness in Gigi’s expression - she’s a smiler, she’d thought, and she had the laughter lines to prove it. For all the evidence Crystal has stacked against her, she has to admit Gigi at least didn’t have the eyes of a killer - they’ve always been too kind, too warm, to belong to someone capable of anything dangerous. Something in the way she’s looking at Crystal now tells her she was foolish to ever make that judgement in the first place.

-

Gigi stays standing in the middle of the room until Crystal slams the bathroom door behind her and counts to five just to be careful, poised, alert, almost cat-like in her posture. When she’s sure she’s alone she relaxes, slumps backwards onto the armchair sitting in the corner of the dimly-lit room and cringes as her back hits the too-firm pillow perched on top. She sits there for a while, content in her temporary solitude, using the sound of the running faucet as a makeshift timer. For a second, she lets herself zone out, picturing how it’d be if she was by herself entirely; peaceful, unbothered, and, most importantly, not in constant fucking danger of being arrested.  _ Thanks,  _ Crystal. 

She thinks back to the house and laughs, sharp and soft, weirdly proud. She’d always been one for dramatics, even as a kid, and had decided the trait would be useful as an adult, even in her line of work,  _ especially  _ in her line of work. She stands by the mentality that if you’re going to get a job done, you have to go all out, end with a flourish, and she’s seen some good ones over the years: flowers left at the scene, puzzle pieces, forged dying messages, the whole nine yards. 

She doesn’t let herself think too hard on how she left him, barely cold and hopelessly bloody sprawled on the floor. There was no flair in that, it was clumsy, reminiscent of an amateur. She is  _ not  _ an amateur.

There are lots of ways she could progress from here, she decides, shaking her head as if to rid herself of the thought and pulling herself back to the present. Being alone is ideal, but impractical, and there’s not many ways she could get away with it. She could leave, sure, but there’s no point - she’s hardly short on money, but she isn’t about to completely waste what she’d paid for the room. Besides, there’s nowhere she can go, and she can’t leave Crystal here alone without making herself look ten times more suspicious.

She sighs, running her nails across the back of her hand and admiring the lines she leaves behind, soft red against pale skin. They’re not sharp enough to draw blood, obviously, but she has things in her purse that are. The faucet stops running. She sits up, eyes the bathroom door, and fantasises about solitude once again, considers what she’d do to achieve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to alex for being the world's best beta, and to my jankie candle legends for encouraging me to do more on this.  
> also to all of you that left kudos/nice comments on aq on the first chapter - thank you ! <3  
> xoxo


	3. Chapter 3

‘You ever played truth or dare?’ Crystal asks, eyeing Gigi up from across the room before attempting to pull the cap off a bottle of water with her teeth.

‘What are you, twelve?’ Gigi responds, rolling her eyes. She had to be pretty tired, then, Crystal thought - there wasn’t any substantial threat behind her stare anymore. ‘Why can’t you just go to sleep?’

_ Because I’m not stupid,  _ Crystal thinks.  _ Because the last time you told me to do that, you left. _

_ Because I don’t think I trust you anymore, and the thought is terrifying. Because you’re terrifying, now, and I hate that more than anything. _

‘Because I’m not tired,’ she replies, proud of the way her voice sounds so calm when her head is so anxious, so clouded, so unsure. ‘I think it’d be fun.’

‘I think it’d be stupid,’ Gigi sighs, rolling over to face the wall. ‘I think you should go to sleep.’

‘Truth or dare, Gigi?’ Crystal persists, laughing to herself while turning the cap around in her grip - it’s easier to focus on that than anything else, and she welcomes the distraction with open arms. 

‘I’m not doing this.’

‘Okay,’ Crystal laughs, flicking the light switch next to her bed and watching the wall lamp flicker and die out, plunging them into darkness. ‘S’not my fault you hate fun. Goodnight.’

The room is silent, save for the sound of breathing and occasional hum of a passing car. It should be comforting but feels uneasy, dangerous, hostile. Gigi tries every trick in the book to get to sleep: counts sheep, counts backwards from a hundred, a thousand, counts the distance in tiles on the ceiling between her and Crystal when her eyes adjust to the lack of light, tries to make sense of how, if the only thing separating them is five slabs of fibreglass, she feels so hopelessly far away.

She looks over at Crystal, laying on her side, eyes closed, breathing softly. She wants so badly to reach over and fix the lock of hair that’s fallen from where Crystal had tucked it behind her ear, push it back into place and herself with it, wants everything to go back to how it was.

She can’t, and she knows that. This is all her doing - she made this bed of nails, and now she’s lying in it, tossing and turning in the blankets like a straightjacket. She sighs, clenches her hands into fists, and starts counting again.

100.

99.

98.

97.

Nothing.

96.

95.

It’s not working.

‘Truth,’ she says, sitting up and pushing her bedsheets onto the floor. Crystal sighs, and Gigi hears her bed creak as she rolls over. 

‘I’m trying to sleep,’ Crystal deadpans, tone mocking. ‘What are you, twelve?’

Gigi glares at her through the darkness and breathes deeply - a futile attempt to calm herself down, but an attempt nonetheless, for the record. She opens her mouth to speak but, for once, a scathing remark doesn’t come easily. ‘It’s been ten minutes,’ she says, trying to keep her voice level, steady, calm. ‘What, you don’t want our super-fun girls’ night in anymore?’

‘ _ You _ didn’t,’ Crystal shoots back, audibly tired. Gigi wonders if it’s genuine exhaustion, completely justified by the hour, or if Crystal’s just tired of her. She decides she doesn’t want to know the answer.

‘I can’t ever fucking  _ win  _ with you,’ Gigi replies, slamming her fists into the mattress at her sides. The words brew in her brain as a joke but leave her mouth like a bullet, just slightly too loud, and she swears she sees Crystal  _ flinch,  _ move an inch closer towards the window. She doesn’t meet Gigi’s eyes, no matter how much she wants her to. When she speaks, it’s quiet - not meek but scolding, bitter, almost resentful.

‘Okay,’ Crystal sighs, her voice an irritated monotone as she sits up, switching the wall lamp back on. ‘This is a good one. What’s your favourite color?’ 

‘Are you serious?’ Gigi asks. Crystal shrugs, but doesn’t reply. Gigi lets out a sigh, desperately trying to shove a lid on her irritation as it bubbles up inside her like boiling water. 

She’s never been good at managing her feelings. The pot overflows, and she’s too tired to put in any effort to stop it.

‘I’m just trying to  _ talk _ to you,’ she snaps, running one hand through her hair in exasperation. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do, but you asked me to play this fucking game, so I am, and I just want you to try to keep a half consistent attitude towards me for two fucking seconds so I can figure out how I can do something you won’t take issue with.’

Crystal laughs, feels it deep in her throat, and she’s sure something in her snaps. She clasps her shaking hands together, squeezing until her fingers turn white. ‘Sorry,’ she chokes out, ‘too boring? I didn’t think you’d be up for anything too deep. Isn’t that normally a bit much for you?’

‘Crystal-’

‘No, it’s fine, don’t worry, I’ve got _ tons _ of questions if you want something more interesting.’ She seems on edge - her voice is far shakier than usual, but there’s something raw and angry behind her words and it makes Gigi shiver as though she’s being condemned. ‘This one’s more of an uncertain what-if thing, but you’ve always been good at those, so it should be no problem for you.’ She grins, but Gigi knows nothing about it is genuine. ‘So, hypothetically, say you’re a part of this investigation to catch someone super dangerous, right? And you know this guy is really important in a bigger-picture kind of case being worked on by people with  _ way  _ more power than you-’

_ ‘Crystal-’ _

‘-and it’s _ imperative _ that you find this guy and bring him back to be questioned, because he knows enough to let everyone solve this  _ whole thing! _ So you get a lead on this guy, and you’re with your team, and everyone leaves to go to one room they think he’s in, but you find him first, by yourself, and he’s hurt, and this is your chance, right?’

Crystal looks at her, and she smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes - she looks angry, defeated. There’s something resentful in her stare that Gigi’s never seen from her before, and it makes her horribly uncomfortable.

‘Did you get all that?’ Crystal spits, her tone almost poisonous. ‘What would you do, Gigi?’

Gigi sits, and she stares, and she says nothing. She’s frozen, blood running ice cold, and Crystal’s sitting across from her, seething with anger, white-knuckled and red-eyed, and if Gigi looks close enough, she swears she can see tears forming. The silence between them is thick and borderline venomous, both completely empty and overflowing with animosity. She hates it. She says silent.

‘Nothing?’ Crystal spits, eyes wide, cocking her head to one side in horrible, almost cartoonish anger. ‘You don’t know? Weird, you seemed so sure of it before.’

‘I’m  _ sorry _ ,’ Gigi breathes, hoarse and shaky. ‘I-’

‘No, you’re not,’ Crystal interrupts. ‘You’re not fucking sorry in the slightest, and that’s the worst part.’

She flicks off the wall lamp and slides back into bed silently, turning to face the window, staring into the pitch-black surroundings, focusing on the shadow of a distant forest, wishing she was anywhere else. ‘Goodnight,’ she says, and the hostility in her voice crawls inside Gigi and pulls at her throat, cuts her like a blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha! that was fun!  
> thank you as always to alex for being the best beta (and her dog, for writing 'dccccccccccccccccccccccccf' in my document and having it sound more poetic than anything i could ever hope to write) and to jankie candle for inspiration, motivation, and providing cheesy truth or dare questions. i feel like missing out on this game in high school except for maybe once left me with a warped view of it and the ability to use it as the buildup to horrible arguments. win?


End file.
